Chapter 18

As Rose stood with Lissa in the hallway ten minutes before first hour, the two of them were reviewing each other's schedules.

"Hey, guys," Natalie Dashkov said, as she approached from behind Rose, "you two comparing schedules?"

"Hi Natalie," grinned Lissa. Even more stick thin than Lissa but without any of Lissa's feminine grace or soft features, Natalie was pasty-pale and kind of a nerd, with thick glasses and stringy black hair, but Lissa was always nice to everyone, "Yeah, we were just looking over our classes. What have you got?"

Natalie passed her schedule over to Lissa, taking Rose's from Lissa in exchange. "Hey, both of us have the same first hour!" she said, a little too enthusiastic.

"We do?" asked Rose, "Lissa has that same class, too. Oddly, there's no teacher listed, but it's in Stan's classroom. Cultural Literacy sounds like a total snore-fest, especially with him teaching it, but I heard from my mom, who's on the school board, that they're really pushing the angle after some of the lawsuits that have popped up in the past few years."

"Stan?" asked Natalie, clueless.

"She means Mr. Alto," Lissa added helpfully, "He and Rose don't exactly see eye-to-eye. Although ..."

Rose tried unsuccessfully to cock an eyebrow and finally just asked, "What Liss?"

"Well, if it weren't for Mr. Alto, you never would have ended up in detention," Lissa responded, making eye contact.

Natalie scratched her chin. "What's so special about detention?"

Rose looked at Lissa, mentally willing her to keep from accidentally spilling her secret when talking to Natalie, knowing that Natalie could never keep her big mouth shut.

"Sexy Mr. Belikov is in detention. Without being there, Rose never would have met her boyfriend," Lissa said, realizing after she said it where she had gone wrong, but it was too late to take it back.

"What Lissa means is that Mr. Belikov made me pair up with my boyfriend for tutoring after school when he realized how far behind I was in English Lit," Rose covered quickly, "Although honestly, Belikov himself is absolutely yummy to look at."

"Really?" Natalie asked, "I wonder if I could get him to set me up with a tutor. I did horrible at Literature last term. Based on my schedule, it looks like I have him for my Lit class."

"Yeah," said Lissa, "I'm sure you could talk to him about it; he's a really nice guy."

Turning to Lissa, Natalie added, "And if he's so great-looking, maybe I could even convince Daddy to pay him to tutor me himself! God knows I could use a hot teacher as my tutor, working all close to me."

Natalie's father, Victor Dashkov, was as wealthy as Rose's parents, but he was also a criminal defense attorney. He was as slimy as they came and would freely offer bribes to get people to do what he wanted. Or what Natalie wanted, as was often the case.

Rose rolled her eyes at Natalie while her back was turned, but argued, "He actually recommended someone else because he's super-busy. The guy has like three jobs, and a girlfriend besides."

"Wow, Rose," said Natalie, turning to look at Rose again, "you sure know an awful lot about this guy for his being your teacher in detention. Is he this chummy with all of his students?"

"Trust me," Rose tried, hoping her lie was believable, "I wouldn't know this if my dad hadn't tried to get him to tutor me and Belikov offered up all of these excuses. He offered him an obscene amount of money, too."

"You don't even use Belikov's first name like you do every other teacher," Natalie countered, "It's probably because you don't even know what it is.  I bet if I had my daddy ask him, he could offer him even more money - enough that he could quit one of his other two jobs. And Daddy could get me a first name out of him."

"Some things aren't about money," Lissa told her.

Rose silently ground her teeth together, praying that she wouldn't lose any more of Dimitri's free time to his having to tutor Natalie.

"What about the rest of your classes?" Lissa offered, diplomatically, trying to change the subject, "Who else do you have?"

Without missing a beat, Natalie launched into her schedule, and then, "What about Christian? Is he going to be in any classes with you, Lissa? Do you know his schedule by heart? Oh, and wouldn't it be exciting if he was in all of your classes with you? Ooh, and I wonder if I have first lunch or second. I really hate second lunch because I'm always starved by then."

"Maybe it would help if you didn't have an eating disorder," Rose muttered under her breath.

Natalie turned. "What was that, Rose?"

Rose put on her best fake smile and replied, "I said, 'Too bad they won't let you place a delivery order.'"

"It really is!" It'd be so nice if I could just have food delivered right to my fourth period class before lunch! Maybe I should see if I could talk to Daddy. I bet he could convince the school to make an allowance. He could probably even pay our family doctor to write me a note for school saying that I have to eat for health reasons. I bet he could even get them to rearrange my schedule so that I could get first lunch if I'm not already in it!"

"Why don't we just wait and see which lunch we end up getting?" Lissa suggested, giving Natalie a consoling pat on the forearm.

"I'm sure you're right, Lissa. For all I know, I will end up in first lunch, anyways."

Just then, Christian approached, pulling Lissa into a kiss that was well beyond what Rose wanted to stomach. When Rose turned, she saw Dimitri entering the teachers' lounge.

"Can you guys give me a second?" Rose asked, pulling her phone out, "I just need to send a quick text."

Lissa and Christian were still lip-locked, but Natalie replied, "Ooh, is this to the new boyfriend?"

Rose nodded. "Actually, yeah. Yeah, it is."

"What's his name?" Natalie asked, "Do you have any pictures of him?"

Rose glanced at her phone in hand, knowing it would be impossible not to have Natalie glancing over her shoulder and suddenly grateful that she didn't have any pictures of Dimitri on her phone, "Umm, Woodrow," Rose said, "But I call him Woody for short."

"Woodrow? Wow, that's a strange name! Almost like that character from those stupid Lonesome Dove miniseries my mom always used to watch over and over again."

Knowing that Dimitri's phone contact was placed under the main character from the very series Natalie was talking about, she tried to cover quickly, "Woody loves that series, too. The books more than the miniseries. He loves it so much that for the first several weeks he was tutoring me, he let me think that 'Call' was his last name. He's even constantly going in and messing with my phone contact and changing his last name back. He thinks it's hilarious."

Rose hoped that it was believable. The lies were getting deeper every minute she kept talking to Natalie about Dimitri.

"Well, in that case, do you have any pictures of Woody? I'd love to see what he looks like. I mean, he must be hot, after dating Adrian Ivashkov - what a gorgeous dreamboat!"

Rose chuckled to herself at the old-timey word that Natalie had chosen, but Natalie's primary social life activity was spending time with her ancient parents, so she often picked up words that were things no teen would ever say.

"No, I actually don't have any. Woody really doesn't like to have his picture taken."

Natalie looked sympathetic. "Ah, I understand. Guys don't like to take their pictures with me, either."

Christian and Lissa finally broke apart and Natalie immediately burst in to their bubble, asking, "Christian, can we see your schedule?"

Christian handed over his schedule as Rose went to quickly text Dimitri: Looks like I have your sparring buddy again this semester. I'll do my best with him to be with you after school for the rest of the year. :-)

Rose smiled as she hoped that her message was vague enough not to arouse suspicions, but specific enough that Dimitri would know she was hoping to get her detention extended.

"Well, would you look at that?" Natalie exclaimed, "We all have that same first hour class! I wonder how many people are going to be in there."

Rose replied, "My mom said that most of the seniors would have to take it this semester. School board requirement."

"Are you guys ready to head to class?" Christian asked, "We have five minutes and I'd like to get a good seat."

"Sure!" Lissa replied, grinning ear-to-ear and way too excited.

"One second," said Rose.

Rose quickly typed up a follow-up text: Maybe if we're both lucky, I'll be the only one there and we can repeat that thing that happened when they waxed the floors.

She found herself smiling harder, imagining a second round of pleasuring Dimitri right in his classroom and knowing the possibility of getting caught only added to the excitement.

Rose got a reply back from Dimitri, asking, Are we all good with the schedule?

Ivan had counseled Dimitri and Rose both to try to assure that Dimitri was not Rose's instructor, because that would be a conflict of interest and could present some legal complications if Dimitri was responsible for Rose's grades. Dimitri had originally planned to meet with Vice-principal Petrov right before Christmas break to request that Rose wasn't put into any of his classes. He didn't have to provide a reason and wasn't planning to, but having his nose re-broken had kept him from making that meeting, so he was hoping that he wouldn't have to request any last-minute changes on the first day of classes.

Rose looked at her schedule again. She had avoided taking a Literature class this term specifically so that Dimitri wouldn't be teaching her. She knew Dimitri's classroom by heart and it was nowhere on her schedule.

She typed back: All good. See you @ end of day.

Then she backspaced and changed it to: All good. Can't wait for you to come @ end of day, taking pride in the dual meaning of 'come' there that only Dimitri would know.

Christian was getting short-tempered and huffed, "Are you finally ready? It's like you girls can't do any fucking thing without having a conference call. Maybe now you need to go to the bathroom together and help put each other's tampons in?"

Rose scowled, but put her phone in her pocket and began walking. As they walked, Christian sniggered, "Actually, second thought, fuck! That's actually really hot! Go ahead and help each other putting your tampons in. Any time you want. As long as I get to watch eventually."

Rose elbowed Christian and they entered the classroom, taking seats in the far back of the room. Stan Alto was nowhere to be seen yet, but there were more students than Rose had ever seen in his classroom. It looked like they had added roughly double the desks to the classroom and they were all filling up.

"I can't believe how many people are in here," Lissa said, "It must be the entire senior class."

Rose nodded, knowing what her mother had said about the school board mandate, and looked around to take note of who else was in the class. Mason Ashford was there, along with their good friend Eddie Castile. Camille Conta was there, showing off some pictures on her phone to the girl next to her that Rose didn't really know. It really was virtually the entire senior class.

While Rose was looking around taking note of the students, the bell rang and the classroom door slammed shut. Rose found herself talking to Lissa, turned sideways, instead of looking up at Stan getting ready to present to the class.

"Rose," Lissa said, tugging on Rose's sleeve and pointing up at the teacher's desk, but Rose would not be swayed. She needed to get into detention for the entire semester with Stan, so why not start off by ignoring him altogether?

"Don't worry about it," Rose said, "I'll turn around when I have to."

"But, Rose," Lissa repeated, looking rather urgent.

Rose knew Lissa was a stickler for following the rules and just rolled her eyes again.

"Holy hotness!" Natalie's whisper exclaimed, "I definitely want him to be my tutor!"

Then, from the front of the class, Rose heard a familiar heavily accented voice say, "Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Cultural Literacy. I'm your instructor, Mr. Belikov. I will be teaching this class, but I have a teacher assistant by the name of Serena Grant who will be doing half of the grading, so you'll want to stay on both of our good sides."

"Wow, Rose," whispered Natalie, "I see what you mean about the eye candy. I'm talking to Daddy right away about this."

Rose couldn't breathe. Her mouth dropped open. Dimitri was her Cultural Literacy teacher.

~-~

Author's Notes:

Have you ever had a friend or acquaintance who reminded you of the Natalie I wrote from this chapter (either Natalie's being nerdy, spoiled, or nosy)?

For those of you who are actual V.A. fans, do you like what I did there combining Serena and Grant's names?

I posted a preview for this chapter on my Instagram and Facebook on Tuesday night, the chapter went live on Wattpad on Friday night, and the chapter was posted on Fanfiction dot Net and ArchiveOfOurOwn the following Monday.

As always, thanks so much for reading, and I'd love it if you could take a minute and vote ⭐ or comment 💬.

AND FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO THOUGHT THE SURPRISE WAS THAT TASHA WAS HIS T.A.:

What the hell, guys? REALLY? You thought that Tasha was going to be his T.A.?!? Come on.

Did you honestly think I was going to have Tasha, who's not even in the teaching field, be his teacher assistant (who are traditionally all, in my experience, college students), hired by the district independent of knowing that Dimitri would be the teacher? And did you seriously not read the Author's Notes several chapters ago where I explicitly told you all that Tasha would not be an obstacle in this story? Seriously?

And did you honestly miss that hint about checking chapter one? Rose's first hour class was Stan Alto's class - the very class Dimitri was taking over - and it was explicitly stated that "almost the entire senior class will be enrolled" (which would include Rose) taking this class.

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